Systematic Literature Review on Corporate Accelerator: Benefits, Challenges and Critical Success Factors

The current fast-changing scenario, mainly impacted by aspects related to digital transformation, requires companies to keep high levels of innovation and technological development to remain competitive. In this sense, the collaboration with start-ups has been seen as an efficient solution for this matter, in which the Corporate Accelerator Model presents itself as one of the opportunities that satisfy all the involved parties. The present work aims to identify the dominant benefits, challenges, and critical success factors of Corporate Accelerators. For this purpose, the methodology used comprises three main steps: (i) a Systematic Literature Review using the PRISMA Method to map the major publications related to the topic; (ii) a bibliographic analysis of the most important quantitative indexes related to the portfolio of articles; and (iii) a Content Analysis, supported by the MaxQDA software. The results include a descriptive analysis for a final portfolio with 32 articles, which provide a better comprehension of the evolution scenario about Corporate Accelerators. In addition, the main benefits and challenges were identified, both for the start-up and larger companies that carry out accelerator programs. Furthermore, 13 critical success factors were organized into three dimensions related to Strategy, Management, and Structure. Thus, the present research contributes to the discussion about Corporate Accelerators, providing tools to assist companies to structure Corporate Accelerator Programs, focusing on key matters that have been proven to be directly linked to success.